Brief update - March 3, 2015

Due to other obligations, this will have to be very brief.

The latest satellite image around 9 AM this morning (Tuesday) showed a deep trough and upper low located south of San Diego.  It is in a position to pump copious amounts of Pacific moisture into the southern and central plains, as you can see on the image (whiteness from Mexico into Kansas).  At the same time another Arctic front was surging south.  Normally in these situations this would be a set up for a huge and wet storm for the central plains.  But in this case (and has been the case most of this winter), the low will be undergoing decay as it moves east.  So instead of a deep surface low and what potentially could have been a MAJOR blizzard, the storm will come out in a decaying state.

However, it will still be capable of producing snow across much of the high plains.  Further south and east there will be a major ice storm, or so it appears.

Back to the snow...one of the computer models that we look at offers this solution of possible snow amounts from Tuesday night into early Wednesday afternoon...

Don't take the amounts literally as the weather system is still over water and was not sampled well by the upper balloon network.  The best course of action is to follow your local National Weather Service for the latest thinking and forecast:   www.weather.gov

One of the reasons I wanted to post this morning before I hit the road is to give just a brief outlook for the remainder of March and into April.  Keep in mind, what I'm about to offer is very preliminary and I will be looking deeper into this during the next week or so.

After this shot of cold and snow, the atmosphere will be going back into a "warm" phase.  Since the fall, there have been three distinct "mild/warm" periods and three distinct cold periods.   The atmosphere is heading into the warmer part of the pattern.  Thus, much warmer weather is in store starting Friday and will last into early April.  HOWEVER, there were still be a couple of colder days, but those times of cold won't last too long (day or two).  

As far as precipitation, one period I'm looking at is between March 21 and March 26.  IF, some cold air (not necessarily Arctic) is available, there could be yet another snow this month and most likely during that period.  Historically blizzards are prevalent during the last 10 days of March and this year may not be an exception.  

Following that period of possible storminess, it may get really mild and warm by the first few days of April.  I hope this doesn't bring rapid growth to the wheat. Because?  Because starting around the 4th of April the atmosphere will be going back into the cold phase of the pattern and this may persist until around the 24th of April (with a few above normal days mixed in).  Could there even be an April snow across the plains?  I would bet on it, especially across the higher elevations of the western plains of Colorado and Kansas.

I'll go into more detail and depth as I get a bit more time.